Start a blog to get more freelance clients? Why would I do that? To quote the infamous, Gary Vaynerchuck:
Producing content is now the BASELINE for all brands and companies. It literally doesn’t matter what business you’re in, what industry you operate in, if you’re not producing content, you basically don’t exist.
Of course, it’s not just his opinion. There are plenty of studies and statistics to back up the fact the content marketing is the most effective way to start getting clients and customers from scratch:
- 69% of people bought something because of a tweet
- 94% plan to make a purchase from a business they follow
- Pit content marketing against paid search, and content marketing gets three times the leads per dollar spent.
- Content marketing generates over three times as many leads as outbound marketing and costs 62% less.
- Almost half of 18- to 49-year-old people get their news and information online – and those numbers are growing.
- Small businesses with blogs get 126% more lead growth than small businesses without.
- After reading recommendations on a blog, 61% of U.S. online consumers made a purchase.
- Content marketing rakes in conversion rates six times higher than other methods.
- Populating websites with blog content is how you end up with 434% more search engine-indexed pages than other business sites that don’t publish content.
- Businesses publishing 16-plus posts a month get almost 3.5 times more traffic than businesses publishing zero to four articles
“Ok, John. I’m in, but what do I do?
Let’s start with the big picture strategy:
Traffic, lead sales.
Simply put, you use content to get traffic to your website. ON that website, you push visitors to your lead optin pages. Once on your mailing list, you followup with subscribers and sell them your services.
There’s more nuance to it than that, but that’s the basic idea.
One caveat for freelancers, while the above holds true, I would also add repeat clients and referrals to that list. That’s because they are such a critical part of a successful freelance business.
You won’t survive without them.
However, content marketing plays a big role in getting repeat clients and referrals because it helps you attract your most ideal clients. People who are more likely to love working with you.
And therefore, come back again and again.
So, with all that out of the way, here’s the HOW:
Here’s what’s covered in the video:
Domain Name
- What should my domain name be?
- Where do I get a domain name?
- How do I upload my site to my domain name?
Hosting
- What is hosting?
- Should I host my own website?
- Where do I get hosting?
- Recommended providers
- How do I connect it to my domain name?
Install WordPress
- Why WordPress
- How do I install it?
- Where can I learn how to use it?
Install Recommended Plugins
- Elementor
- Custom CSS and JS
- Yoast SEO
- Monster Insights
- Wordfence
- JetPack
Pick Your Theme
- OceanWP
- Hello Theme
Setup Pages
- Services
- Email Optin
- Home
- About
- Contact
- Blog
Write Your First Blog Post
- First post: Top X Mistakes ABCers Make When Hiring an XYZer
- Story showing you can relate
- How you discovered the right way
- The tips
- How YOU fit the criteria
- Where to hire you
Promote Your Post
- Record a video and post on YouTube
- Rip audio and post as podcast
- Share links on social media (Twitter, LinkedIn)
- Re-post on Medium/relevant sites
- Record short video ABOUT post and post to Instagram/Facebook
